Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Advances in OptoElectronics
Volume 2012, Article ID 968780, 12 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/968780

Research Article
Recent Advances in Multiband Printed Antennas Based on
Metamaterial Loading

F. Paredes,1 G. Zamora,1 S. Zufanelli,1 F. J. Herraiz-Martı́nez,2 J. Bonache,1 and F. Martı́n1

1 GEMMA/CIMITEC, Departament d’Enginyeria Electrònica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
2 Departamento de Teorı́a de la Señal y Comunicaciones, Universidad Carlos III, 28911 Madrid, Spain

Correspondence should be addressed to F. Martı́n, ferran.martin@uab.es

Received 16 May 2012; Accepted 9 July 2012

Academic Editor: Ivan D. Rukhlenko

Copyright © 2012 F. Paredes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

It is shown that printed antennas loaded with metamaterial resonators can be designed to exhibit multiband functionality.
Two different antenna types and metamaterial loading are considered: (i) printed dipoles or monopoles loaded with open
complementary split ring resonators (OCSRRs) and (ii) meander line or folded dipole antennas loaded with split ring resonators
(SRRs) or spiral resonators (SRs). In the first case, multiband operation is achieved by series connecting one or more OCSRRs
within the dipole/monopole. Such resonators force opens at their positions, and by locating them at a quarter wavelength (at the
required operating frequencies) from the feeding point, it is possible to achieve multiple radiation bands. In the second case, dual-
band functionality is achieved through the perturbation of the antenna characteristics caused by the presence of the metamaterial
resonators. This latter strategy is specially suited to achieve conjugate matching between the antenna and the chip in radiofrequency
identification (RFID) tags at two of the regulated UHF-RFID bands.

1. Introduction effective permittivity up to the so-called plasma frequency),

Metamaterials are effective media made of periodic (or
quasiperiodic) inclusions of conventional materials (typ-
ically metals and dielectrics) with controllable acoustic,
electromagnetic, or optical properties. Indeed, by properly
structuring these artificial materials, it is possible to achieve
unique and exotic properties, such as negative refraction or
subwavelength focusing, among others, and it is potentially
possible to implement acoustic and optical cloaks. There
has been an intensive research activity in this field since
2000 [1–10], when the first metamaterial structure by Smith
and co-workers was reported [11]. Key to the success of
this research field was the synthesis of negative effective
permeability media by means of split ring resonators (SRRs)
[12]. These particles are electrically small resonators that can
be excited by means of an axial magnetic field. Hence, if an
array of SRRs is illuminated by means of an electromagnetic
radiation with the magnetic field axial to the SRRs, the
structure behaves as an effective medium with negative
permeability in a narrow band above SRR resonance. By
combining SRRs with metallic posts (exhibiting a negative
the first structure simultaneously exhibiting negative permit-
tivity and permeability was synthesized [11]. These struc-
tures are called left-handed, or double negative, materials,
and the main relevant feature of such media, derived from
the negative sign of the constitutive parameters, is the anti-
parallelism between the phase and group velocities [13].
The metamaterial concept and some metamaterial prop-
erties were soon transferred to the microwave engineering
field, since it was demonstrated that by loading a transmis-
sion line with series capacitances and shunt inductances, left-
handed wave propagation (i.e., backward waves) is achieved
[14–16]. These artificial lines loaded with series capacitances
and shunt inductances and exhibiting some metamaterial
properties are called metamaterial transmission lines. In
2003, it was demonstrated that metamaterial transmission
lines can also be implemented by means SRRs [17]. Specif-
ically, by properly combining SRRs and shunt strips in
a coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission line, backward
wave propagation in a narrow band arises, and by merely
loading the CPW with SRRs, the structure exhibits a stop-
band behavior that has been interpreted as due to the
2 Advances in OptoElectronics

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 1: Typical topology and lumped element equivalent circuit model of the (a) SRR, (b) CSRR, (c) OSRR, and (d) OCSRR.

(a) (b)

Figure 2: Sketch of the antipodal dipole antenna. (a) Topology of the square-shaped OCSRR. (b) Top and cross-sectional views of the dipole
antenna loaded with OCSRRs.

negative value of the effective permeability in the stop band
[18]. It is important to mention that even though effective
permeability and permittivity in metamaterial transmission
lines can be defined [1, 2, 4], the relevant parameters in
transmission lines (fundamental for design purposes) are the
phase constant and the characteristic impedance. Thanks to
the presence of reactive elements (inductances, capacitances,
or electrically small resonators) in metamaterial transmis-
sion lines, it is possible to tailor these parameters to some
extend in these artificial lines. Therefore, the key advantage
of metamaterial transmission lines over conventional lines
is the controllability of the phase constant and characteristic
Advances in OptoElectronics 3

impedance [19]. In many applications few (or even a single)

unit cells suffice to achieve the required line specifications.
Hence, periodicity and homogeneity (necessary for the
implementation of effective media metamaterials) are not a
due in metamaterial transmission lines. Indeed, some times,
rather than tailoring the characteristic impedance or the
phase of a transmission line, it might be simply necessary
to use coupled resonators in order to achieve a transmission
zero or to perturb somehow the line characteristics in the
vicinity of particle resonance. As long as the considered
resonators are electrically small and related to the SRR, these
resonator-loaded lines are called transmission lines with
metamaterial loading. This concept can be made extensive to Figure 3: Picture of the fabricated prototypes. Top: unloaded
other structures such as printed antennas, which is the case printed dipole antenna. Bottom: proposed dual-band printed
considered in this paper. dipole antenna.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the meta-
material resonators considered in this paper are reviewed.
Section 3 is focused on multiband printed dipole and
monopole antennas loaded with open complementary split
ring resonators (OCSRRs), and Section 4 is devoted to the
implementation of dual-band UHF-RFID tags based on
meander line and folded dipole antennas with metamaterial
loading. Finally the main conclusions are highlighted in
Section 5.

2. SRRs and Other Related

Metamaterial Resonators
The typical topology of the SRR is depicted in Figure 1(a).
It consists on a pair of coupled split rings with the apertures
on opposite sides. The coupling between both rings drives
the first resonance frequency to low values, as compared to
that of the individual rings, and for this reason the SRR
is electrically small. By virtue of the small electrical size of
the particle, a quasistatic analysis can be applied to the SRR
[4, 20], and the capacitance and inductance are given by the
series connection of the distributed (edge) capacitances of
both SRR halves and by the inductance of a single loop of
identical width c and average radius r0 . Pairs of SRRs etched
in the back substrate side of CPW transmission lines can
be inductively driven by the magnetic field generated by the
line, resulting in negative effective permeability metamaterial
transmission lines [17, 18].
By applying duality, the complementary split ring res-
onator (CSRR) results [21, 22] (Figure 1(b)). This resonator
exhibits roughly the same resonance frequency to that of
the SRR (provided the same dimensions and substrate are
considered) and is typically driven by an axial time-varying
electric field. CSRRs have been used for the implementation
of negative effective permittivity metamaterial transmission
lines in microstrip technology, where the CSRRs are etched in
the ground plane beneath the conductor strip (more details
on the calculation of particle inductance and capacitance are
given in [23]).
Let us now consider the open versions of the previous
particles, that is, the open SRR (OSRR) [24] and the open
CSRR (OCSRR) [25]. The typical topologies are depicted
in Figures 1(c) and 1(d), respectively. Notice that as long
Figure 4: Measured and simulated reflection coefficient of the
proposed dual-band antenna compared to the unloaded antenna.
(——) measured dual-band printed dipole antenna; (- - - -)
simulated dual-band printed dipole antenna; (— —) measured
unloaded printed dipole antenna.
as these particles are open resonators (the connecting pins
are indicated), they can be excited by means of a voltage or
a current source. As compared to SRRs and CSRRs, OSRRs
and OCSRRs are electrically smaller by a factor of two. The
reason is simple: for the OSRR, the inductance is identical to
that of the SRR, but the capacitance is the edge capacitance of
the whole circumference, and hence it is 4 times higher than
that of the SRR. This reduces the resonance frequency of the
OSRR to half the resonance frequency of the SRR. For the
OCSRR, the capacitance is identical to that of the CSRR, but
the inductance is four times larger since in the CSRR there
are two inductive paths (in parallel) between the inner region
of the particle and the outside metallic region, whereas for
the OCSRR there is a single inductive path corresponding
to the whole circumference of the particle. As can be seen
4 Advances in OptoElectronics
(a)
Figure 5: Simulated normalized radiation patterns for the dual-band dipole antenna. (a) XZ plane. (b) YZ plane. (——) 1.575 GHz
(copolar component); (— —); 1.575 GHz (cross-polar component); (- - - -) 2.45 GHz (copolar component); (— - —) 2.45 GHz (cross-
polar component).
in the circuit models depicted in Figure 1, the OSRR is
an open series resonator, whereas the OCSRR is an open
parallel resonator. It has been demonstrated that combined
OSRRs and OCSRR in CPW and microstrip lines are useful
for the implementation of metamaterial transmission lines
(and many circuits based on them) and broadband bandpass
filters [26].
By connecting the external pins of the OSRR, a 2-turn
spiral resonator (2-SR) results [27, 28] (other multiple-turn
spirals have been studied in the literature [29]). Therefore the
2-SR is a closed resonator that exhibits the same resonance
frequency as that of the OSRR. It can also be concluded from
duality arguments that the complementary counterpart of
the 2-SR exhibits also this resonance frequency (which is also
that of the OCSRR).
3. Multiband Printed Dipole and Monopole
Antennas with Metamaterial Loading
Let us now focus on the design of antennas loaded with meta-
material resonators. Indeed, the improvement of antenna
performance by means of metamaterials has been a subject
of intensive research in recent years. Metamaterial substrates
and superstrates to improve the antenna directivity in planar
antennas, or leaky wave antennas with scanning capability
based on metamaterial transmission lines, are two of the
multiple applications of metamaterial technology in the field
of antennas [1–5, 30–33] (an in-depth review of this topic is
out of the scope of this paper).
In this section, the focus is on metamaterial-loaded
printed antennas [34–36]. The idea of this technique is
based on loading a conventional printed antenna with a
set of resonant particles. For example, in [34], it is shown
(b)
that a dual-band antenna is achieved by coupling a set of
SRRs to a printed dipole. Using this approach, the benefits
of printed antennas are kept while dual-band antennas are
achieved by using a simple design technique. The SRRs
produce open circuits in their positions at the resonance
frequencies. Hence the antenna resonance is achieved not
only when the effective length of the dipole arms is λ/4 (λ
being the guided wavelength), but also when the different
locations of the SRR are λ/4 from the antenna feeding point
(the SRRs must be tuned at these frequencies). By using
SRRs, narrow bandwidths are reported in [34] for the bands
associated with the SRR loading. Even the use of SRRs
with different resonance frequencies leads to bandwidths
smaller than 5% [35], which might not be useful for most
applications. However, an open circuit in the dipole arms can
also be obtained by means of OCSRRs. The advantage is that
by series connecting OCSRRs within the dipole, broadband
responses can be achieved (as compared to SRRs), due to the
relative values of capacitance and inductance.
To illustrate the potential of OCSRR-loaded printed
antennas, we report here a dual-band dipole [37] and a
tri-band monopole [38]. The layout of the printed dipole
(an antipodal structure) and the details of the OCSRR are
depicted in Figure 2, whereas the photograph of the antenna
is shown in Figure 3, and compared to the conventional
monoband dipole. The parameters of each dipole strip are
the length L and the width W (which must be engineered
to optimize matching). This configuration has been chosen
because it avoids the use of a balun to feed the antenna.
This is possible because the antipodal printed dipole is
fed through a paired strips transmission line with a SMA
connector soldered to the end of the line. The dimensions
of the feeding line are the length L f and the width W f .
An OCSRR is connected in series to each dipole strip at
Advances in OptoElectronics
(a)
(c)
Figure 6: Sketch of the proposed dual-band (a), and triband (b) printed monopole antenna loaded with OCSRRs, and respective
photographs (c).
a distance dOCSRR from the center of the antenna. The
different dimensions of the proposed antenna have been
optimized to simultaneously operate at the L1-GPS fre-
quency (1.575 GHz) and the WiFi band of 2.4–2.48 GHz.
The final dimensions of the design are L = 22.00 mm, W
= 2.50 mm, L f = 25.00 mm, W f = 1.15 mm, dOCSRR =
17.00 mm, lext = 4.00 mm, and c = d = 0.30 mm. The used
substrate is the Rogers RO3010 with εr = 10.2 and h =
1.27 mm.
In the case of the conventional unloaded antenna, there
is only one series resonance within the band of interest. This
resonance frequency is 2.2 GHz. This resonance corresponds
to the fundamental mode of the dipole antenna. Moreover,
in the vicinity of the resonance, the value of the real part of
the impedance is close to 50 Ω (not shown), which produces
proper matching, as it can be observed in Figure 4. On the
5
(b)
other hand, the OCSRR loading introduces a parallel reso-
nance in the proposed dual-band antenna input impedance.
The addition of this parallel resonance has a double effect
on the input impedance of the proposed dual-band antenna.
The first one is a slight shift on the series resonance of
the dipole antenna towards higher frequencies. In this case,
this resonance is found at 2.45 GHz. The second effect is
the appearance of an additional series resonance below the
parallel resonance of the OCSRRs. This additional series
resonance is found at 1.6 GHz. The real part of the input
impedance is around 50 Ω in the vicinity of this additional
series resonance. This allows achieving an additional band
with proper matching in the proposed antenna (Figure 4).
As it can be seen, this additional frequency is below the
fundamental frequency of the unloaded dipole antenna,
achieving some degree of miniaturization.
6 Advances in OptoElectronics
Figure 7: Simulated and measured reflection coefficient of the proposed dual-band and tri-band printed monopole antennas. The simulated
reflection coefficient of the conventional monopole antenna is also plotted.
Considering |S11 | below −10 dB, the first working band is
centered at 1.56 GHz with 5% bandwidth and the second one
is centered at 2.46 GHz with 9% bandwidth. It is important
to note that this is a considerable improvement with respect
to other works in which the bandwidth of one of the bands
was always below 5% [34, 35]. The obtained results cover
the bandwidth of the proposed applications (GPS and WiFi).
The gain of the antenna has been estimated in a TEM cell
from the power received by the antenna and the incident
field measured by a probe [39]. The measured gain of the
proposed antenna is 0.85 dB at the GPS band (1.575 GHz)
and 2 dB at the WiFi band (2.45 GHz). These experimental
results agree with the CST-simulated ones: 0.9 dB at the first
band and 2.2 dB at the second one.
The CST-predicted radiation patterns for the proposed
dual-band antenna are shown in Figure 5 for completeness.
A dipolar-like radiation pattern is obtained at both working
bands. The typical figure of eight is obtained in the XZ plane
and an omnidirectional pattern is obtained in the YZ plane at
both frequencies (1.575 and 2.45 GHz). The only difference
between both working bands is the cross-polarization level,
which is around −10 dB in the first band while it is −20 dB
in the second one.
Following the ideas of the antipodal dipole antennas
with metamaterial loading, we have also designed multiband
printed monopole antennas. Figure 6 shows a photograph
of two fabricated prototypes: a dual band and a tri-band
printed monopole. The considered substrate in this case is
the low-cost FR4 (εr = 4.5 and h = 1.5 mm). The dual-
band antenna covers the bands of 2.40–2.48 GHz (Bluetooth
and WiFi) and 5.15–5.80 GHz (WiFi). The final dimensions
of the monopole are Lm = 21 mm, Wm = 5.85 mm. The
parameters of the feeding line are set to obtain a 50 Ω CPW.
Hence, S = 2.44 mm and W = 0.30 mm. The dimensions of
each ground plane are Lg = 16 mm and Wg = 13.48 mm.
The gap between the ground planes and the monopole is g =
0.30 mm. The OCSRR is placed at a distance do = 12.50 mm
and its parameters are lext = 2.30 mm, c = d = 0.25 mm. The
gap go is set to 0.50 mm.
The tri-band monopole antenna is an extension of the
previous dual-band antenna and it covers the previous bands
and the IEEE 802.11y band of 3.65–3.70 GHz. According
to the layout of the tri-band monopole (Figure 6), the
additional OCSRR is placed at a distance do2 = 18.00 mm.
Its design parameters are lext = 2.70 mm, c = d = 0.25 mm.
This corresponds to a resonance frequency of 3.65 GHz. The
gap go2 is set to 0.40 mm. These values have been optimized
to only cover the desired bandwidth and not interfere with
other systems. The other parameters of the antenna remain
unchanged with respect to the dual-band design, except the
length of the monopole which is reduced to Lm = 19.75 mm
to compensate the inductive behavior of the OCSRRs below
their resonance frequencies.
The simulated and measured reflection coefficients of the
dual-band and tri-band monopoles are depicted in Figure 7.
The dual-band printed monopole antenna exhibits good
matching (|S11 | < −10 dB) from 2.29 GHz to 2.52 GHz
at the lower frequency band. This corresponds to a 9.6%
bandwidth. In the upper band, the antenna is well matched
from 4.66 GHz to at least 7 GHz. Thus, the fabricated
antenna satisfies the specifications of Bluetooth and WiFi
(bands of 2.40–2.48 GHz and 5.15–5.80 GHz). The fabri-
cated tri-band monopole antenna is well matched from
2.30 GHz to 2.52 GHz for the first band. Its reflection
coefficient is below −10 dB between 3.56 GHz and 3.78 GHz
for the second band, and between 5.06 GHz and 6.71 GHz
Advances in OptoElectronics
(a)
(c)
Figure 8: Measured radiation patterns of the tri-band printed monopole antenna. (a) 2.45 GHz, (b) 3.65 GHz, (c) 5.40 GHz.
for the third band. Hence, the fabricated prototype is
well matched within the regulated bandwidths of Blue-
tooth and WiFi including IEEE 802.11y (3.65–3.70 GHz
band).
The proposed antennas present monopolar radiation
characteristics at all the bands. As an example, the normal-
ized measured radiation patterns of the tri-band monopole
7
(b)
antenna are shown in Figure 8. A monopolar radiation
pattern is obtained at the three frequencies. The cross-polar
component (XPOL) has low values (below −20 dB in all of
the cases, except the XY plane of the third frequency which
is below −15 dB). The gains of this design are 1.4 dB, 1.2 dB,
and 1.7 dB at the first, second, and third bands, respectively.
These results are in good agreement with simulations, in
8 Advances in OptoElectronics

(a) (b)

Figure 9: Layout of the meander line antenna considered for tag implementation (a) and layout of the MLA perturbed by the presence of a
coupled two-turns spiral resonator, 2-SR (b). The strip width of the 2-SR is 0.5 mm, and the separation between strips is 0.3 mm.

(a) (b)

Figure 10: Input impedance of the MLA depicted in Figure 9(a) in a broader band (a) and input impedance of the MLA in the region of
interest (b).

which the radiation efficiency is 92%, 83%, and 94% and
the overall efficiency is 91%, 82%, and 93% at the central
frequency of each band.
4. Dual-Band UHF-RFID Tags
Metamaterial loading is also interesting for the implementa-
tion of dual-band antennas with closed frequency bands, as
is the case of UHF-RFID, where the different regulated bands
worldwide are contained in the spectral region between
860 MHz and 960 MHz. In this case, however, the approach is
based on a perturbation method which was reported in [40].
The key aspect in the implementation of long read-range
UHF-RFID tags is to achieve conjugate matching between
the antenna and the integrated circuit (or chip). The input
impedance of the chip is provided by the manufacturer
and varies with frequency. Therefore, the implementation of
dual-band UHF-RFID tags means to design the antenna (and
the matching network, if it is present) so that the chip “sees”
its conjugate impedance at the required frequencies. This
can be done by cascading a dual-band impedance matching
network between the antenna and the chip, consisting on
a transmission line loaded with a metamaterial resonator
[40]. The resonator produces a perturbation in both the
characteristic impedance and the phase constant of the
transmission line, and conjugate matching at two frequencies
can be obtained (the details are given in [40]). However, it is
possible to directly actuate on the characteristic impedance
of the antenna, by loading it with metamaterial resonant
particles [41] (avoiding thus the matching circuitry). The
principle is very similar to that reported in [40] for matching
networks.
Advances in OptoElectronics 9

200 800

150 600
Resistance (Ohm)

Reactance (Ohm)
100 400

50 200

0 0
0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1
Frequency (GHz)

(a) (b)

Figure 11: Input impedance of the dual-band MLA with coupled SR depicted in Figure 9(b) and power wave reflection coefficient of the
monoband and dual-band meander line antenna. The frequencies where reactance matching is obtained, separated by Δ f1 , are indicated and
correspond to the resonance frequencies of the dual-band MLA.

Following the above-cited perturbation approach, several

dual-band UHF-RFID tag antennas have been implemented.
One prototype device consists on a meander line antenna
(MLA) loaded with a spiral resonator (SR). The layout of
the antenna, compared to the one without the SR is depicted
in Figure 9. The dual-band antenna has been designed to be
operative at the European (867 MHz) and USA (915 MHz)
UHF-RFID regulated bands. The antenna has been designed
on the Rogers RO3010 with dielectric constant εr = 10.2 and
thickness h = 0.127 mm. The considered RFID chip is the
SL31001 from NXP semiconductors. The impedance of the
chip at the intermediate frequency is Zchip = 20 − j485 Ω. Figure 12: Bloch diagram of the experimental setup.
This impedance is considered as reference impedance so that
the antenna is designed to roughly exhibit the conjugate
impedance of the chip at this intermediate frequency, and
then the perturbation (by means of the SR) is introduced
in order to achieve conjugate matching at the required power necessary to activate the RFID chip, Gr is the gain of
frequencies. The dimensions of the MLA are 48 mm × the receiving tag antenna, and τ is the power transmission
48 mm, and the strip width is 1.4 mm. The other relevant coefficient. The value of EIRP in European frequencies is
dimensions are lm = 16.3 mm, wm = 4.8 mm, dl = 7.3 mm, 3.3 W; whereas in American frequencies it is 4 W. The power
dr = 33.9 mm, and d f = 14.2 mm. The input impedance of transmission coefficient is inferred from the simulation of
the MLA is depicted in Figure 10, whereas Figure 11 depicts the return loss of the antenna, using as port impedance that
the input impedance and matching of the MLA loaded with of the chip. The tag gain is also obtained from simulation;
the SR. As can be appreciated, the dual-band functionality in hence the theoretical read range can be calculated.
the SR-loaded MLA is achieved. The experimental setup consists of a N5182A vector
Both antennas have been fabricated, and the read range, signal generator which creates RFID frames. Such generator
given by is connected to a TEM cell by means of a circulator. The tag
 under test is located inside the TEM cell and it is excited
λ EIRPGr τ
r= , (1) by the frame created by the generator. Then the tag sends
4π Pchip
a backscatter signal to a N9020A signal analyzer through
has been measured through the experimental setup available the circulator. The RFID frame frequency is swept with a
in our laboratory (Figure 12). In (1), λ is the wavelength, specific power. Once the operation frequencies are identified,
EIRP, determined by local country regulations, is the product the output power is decreased until the tag stops working.
of Pt Gt which are the transmission power and the trans- Finally, a probe is placed into the TEM cell in order to
mission gain, respectively, Pchip is the minimum threshold determine the incident electric field intensity E0 at each
10 Advances in OptoElectronics

(a) (b)

(c)

Figure 13: (a) Simulated and measured read ranges of the monoband and dual-band MLA RFID tags, and fabricated monoband (b) and
dual-band (c) MLA RFID tags.

frequency, which is related to the received power by the chip be seen that the read range obtained in the dual-band tags
according to (at the frequencies of interest) is superior to that of the
monoband tag. The read range of the monoband MLA
|E0 |2 λ2 Gr tag is roughly 4 m at the frequencies of interest, whereas
Pchip = SAef τ = τ, (2)
2η 4π almost 6 m and 8 m at the European and USA frequency
bands, respectively, are achieved by means of the designed
where S is the incident power density, Aef is the effective area dual-band MLA. This enhancement in the read range is
of the tag antenna, and η is the free-space wave impedance due to an improved matching between the antenna and the
(which is equivalent to 120π Ω). The measured read range integrated circuit, since it has been verified by simulation
can be inferred by introducing (2) in (1), resulting in that the radiation efficiency of the monoband MLA is
√ almost constant from 867 MHz to 950 MHz. In fact, if it
60EIRP
r= . (3) was possible to achieve a perfect matching between the
E0 monoband antenna and the integrated circuit in all the band
As indicated before, the EIRP European value is lower of interest, the obtained read range would be around 8 m at
than the USA counterpart, so the read range in Europe would all frequencies. Nevertheless, this assumption is not possible
be roughly reduced by a 0.9 factor for the same incident due to the particularities of the chip impedance.
electric field intensity. The perturbation method reported above can also be
The fabricated tags, as well as the simulated and mea- applied to folded dipole RFID tag antennas [42]. Figure 14
sured read ranges, are depicted in Figure 13, where it can depicts a prototype, fabricated on the Rogers RO3010 with
Advances in OptoElectronics
Figure 14: Photograph of the designed dual-band tag based on a
folded dipole antenna.
Figure 15: EM simulation and measurement of the read range of
the tag shown in Figure 13, compared to that of the tag without SR.
dielectric constant εr = 10.2 and thickness h = 0.25 mm.
The dimensions are 62.7 mm × 17.9 mm. The simulated
and measured read ranges are depicted in Figure 15 and
compared to those of the tag without the presence of the
SR. Again, the dual-band functionality at the regulated RFID
European and USA frequency bands is achieved.
We would like to mention that in the designed RFID tags,
the resonator frequency is set at the intermediate frequency
(891 MHz), and as a consequence, the resonator impact
on the antenna radiation efficiency can be neglected at the
frequency bands of interest (867 MHz and 915 MHz).
5. Conclusions
In conclusion, two different approaches for the implementa-
tion of multiband printed antennas have been reviewed: one
of them consisting on the introduction of series connected
OCSRRs in the arms of printed dipole or printed monopole
antennas; the other one based on a perturbation method
achieved by loading printed antennas, such as meander line
antennas (MLAs) or folded dipoles, with spiral resonators
(SRs). The former approach has been revealed to be useful
for personal area networks (PANs) and wireless local area
networks (WLANs); the second one is of interest in the field
of UHF-RFID. In both cases, the multiband functionality has
11
been demonstrated through the fabrication and characteriza-
tion of several prototype devices.
Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by Spain-MICIIN (Project
contracts TEC2010-17512 METATRANSFER and CSD2008-
00066) and Spain MITyC through the Projects TSI-020100-
2009-778 and TSI-020100-2010-493. Thanks are also given
to the Catalan Government for giving support through
Project 2009SGR-421.
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